Think Twice, Then Again
by scullyseviltwin
Summary: The West hadn't changed her like she feigned it had, but coming back a new person, it had been easier to face her partner. Drinking tea could only take her so far into a Monday morning...


For the Holiday Hoedown over at eoshippers; thanks to positive and csinut214 for the suggestions. All mistakes are my own.

**lyric**: I was walking along some downtown avenue.  
I was whistling a new song to myself.  
and it went, it went something like this one,  
but I just couldn't make it end.  
but I was talking about this song to a friend of mine,  
and she sang me a new song of her own.  
Hearts of Oak, Ted Leo and the Pharmacists

**adjective**: sexy

* * *

There were-and continue to be-very distinct differences between her chosen place of residence and the subtle, sleepy towns of Oregon where she'd had to play pretend. It ranged from the obvious-population, noise, pizza joints per block-to the distinctly obscure.

There were differences that Olivia could cite, and hate it even as she did. There was no necessity for tissues-in-jean-pocket when she'd been on the west coast. Wind would whip, rain would fall and her nose wouldn't run, the climate humid but-for some reason-too dry for her. No tiny packages of well-folded, plastic encased Kleenex. But the phantom bulge was always in her mind, and she'd find herself sliding fingers into the denim cavern just to check.

She could feel the pavement pulsate in her teeth as she hurried across New York sidewalk, a downtown avenue, feel the city's soul pressing in and around her, welcoming her while reminding that everyone, everyday was a stranger. There's an anonymity that came with being in a large city, in the middle of a crowd and that was one thing that Olivia really liked, being so alone in a metropolis with millions of others who were probably just as alone. Everything moving so slowly, even as taxicabs fly by at outrageous speeds, public transit that would displace passengers all the way into Queens without regard for space or time, Wall Street and Park Avenue, but everything seemed to move so slowly.

Her life was a mess of requisitioned sedans and late-night television, coffee and take out that should have killed her by now. The West hadn't changed her like she feigned it had, but coming back a new person, it had been easier to face her partner. Drinking tea could only take her so far into a Monday morning and though she'd fought to stave it off as best she could, her coffee addiction reared its ugly head as soon as she smelled the Arabica beans being brewed in her favorite, frequented cafe. Another thing, New York had better, better, best coffee. No, she was still Olivia Benson, but one who wore softer colors and who had become angrier, so much angrier.

Upon her return to the Big Apple-an apple that had browned significantly in her absence, she perceived-there were distinctions that she began to make. It had begun with the difference between organic peaches and the ones from the fruit stand on Whacker. It had mutated into drawing parallels between hospital coffee and station coffee; they both tasted the same, of hours of agitation and need and wanting something to happen. Like battery acid, but worse at sitting in your stomach.

Comparisons between El's mood and the color of the tie he chose to wear on any particular day, how the rain would render him just a shade nostalgic and how he was more protective around her now, but spoke much less. Olivia hated it all, but couldn't help it. Somewhere in the air over middle America, listening to the persistent hum of jet engines her outlook on things, life in general, had warped significantly. Maybe it was because she was nudging her way into her forties with nothing to show for it but a slightly tarnished shield and a pretty nice apartment in Brooklyn.

Back when stakeouts had been tests of endurance by the chief, had been trials of patience, they had volley questions back and forth. Inquiries about this and that, and they'd come away from it all with the most odd, intricate information about the other. How much his tattoo had bled, where his favorite Indian place was, the time he cracked his skull on a concrete picnic table structure at the beach on Long Island when he was six. What she had worn to senior prom, the first place she travelled, how she hated her mother. Nights stained with high-octane coffee and talk radio lent to their unusually balanced, close partnership.

It seemed that a month-and-change away had managed to blur the foundation, leave them struggling to make sense of becoming near-strangers. She had been the one to attempt to weather the destruction and had plied him with heavy porter ales she had tasted in Oregon, with honesty about how much he'd been missed. Nights ended with her ears reclaiming the sounds of horns blaring on the streets below and Elliot's paced breaths. And after they'd finished their pizza and he'd gone for the night, she would lie in bed and yearn for a shot of wheat grass and the feeling of missing him from three thousand miles away. It felt so foreign, now, to be missing him from just a borough away.

From that far removed, thoughts had come full force, thought about him that she wouldn't dare to allow to filter through her mind in the state of New York. About how she might describe him, as sexy, as powerful, as captivating, as that sort of everything that encompassed the majority of what remained of her dimly-beating heart. About how everything was wrong about him, and her too, and how that maybe all of that didn't factor into the bigger picture. That their forever was together, sitting at desks facing each other. All of this had escaped her-all of the courage she found in daydreaming and pondering him- when she boarded the return flight and had passed above cities and towns she would never ever visit, full of people she would never meet.

Mountains didn't compare to skyscrapers in the scope of beauty but the constant sight of snowcapped peaks hugged by a backdrop of pine had become too much for her eyes only three weeks into her detail. What she would have given then to inhale exhaust and the scent of subway station popcorn. And now, in the present, she missed the gray, jagged outlines of nature in the distance and the cleanliness that the air promised. She missed too much and claimed too little and Olivia could not, for the *life* of her, figure out how to rectify that situation.

An ever-burgeoning family on his part and more of less-than-adequate dates on her part had left her staring at him more than usual. Things like that made her dizzy, when he caught her staring. "What?" he would ask, and every time, she shrugged it off like it was nothing, like it continued to be nothing. The forever-nothing, a strangely comforting constant.

Olivia thought that she could hold out a little longer, just a little longer before the 'before and after' came crashing together to destroy the facade she'd worked so diligently to maintain. There were some things better left unsaid but the weight of them in her chest had weighed her down, pulled her under much too frequently over the past ten years. Manifesting itself in anger, passion ripped from her chest in frigid words, brash objections that left him looking like he'd been slapped in the face.

Even now, she hated to admit it, but she'd left a significant piece of herself on the west coast, hoping that she could simply set it down, kick it under the rug, pack up her suitcase and leave without it ever returning. Without her consent, it had all crept back in and reattached itself, no worse for the wear.

It occurred to her, from time to time, that they had been revolving around each other without saying anything new, without voicing anything of particular significance. What had she told him, recently, about anything about her that had changed? And she knew that if she spoke, that he'd hear it, he'd listen, and she'd be willing to tell him everything, from the taste of veggie burgers to how she wished that maybe she could be part of a little landscape. How she'd longed for a call from him during those weeks, to hear his voice describing the gridlock traffic and the specials at the deli.

Maybe one day she'd sit down and tell it all to him, about the differences between Portland and New York and he's listen, and she'd be willing to tell him everything but for now she would settle in with her anger and her want and pace herself through the day, living off slivers of conversation they barely managed to speak.


End file.
